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As the ww2 generation passes on, it's easy to forget the degree of utter, total mobilization that went on in the British Isles during the war. I'm always struck
by kjellsbells 1y ago
As the ww2 generation passes on, it's easy to forget the degree of utter, total mobilization that went on in the British Isles during the war. I'm always struck by how easy it is to hike into some remote part of the UK and learn that the parish school was a training ground for Italian resistance fighters or that some park in remote scotland was where they trained commandos. Perhaps its because the country is quite small, and they had to use every inch, but it always seems remarkable.
I think the notion of odd, but brilliant, boffin is deeply embedded in British culture. Or was, until at least the 2000s. The Great Egg Race on TV being a fine example.
- nocoiner 1y agoYou would probably enjoy the book “Backroom Boys” by Francis Spufford.
- FridayoLeary 1y agoWhat i find even more remarkable is how every town, village, school and institution have memorials for those who lost their lives in the Great War. Usually there is another plaque attached in memory of WW2. It's hard to imagine the scale of deaths. The tragedy is how little was accomplished by the sacrifices of ww1. It had none of the moral clarity of ww2 nor did most of the deaths achieve any strategic purpose. On the other hand i knew an old scientist who had quite a few interesting and amusing stories to share about his efforts in WW2. One of them was about his attempts to perfect a formala. Several factories exploded before they succeeded.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoIt's worth pointing out explicitly that WW2 didn't have the moral clarity that it does today either. The vast majority of the western world was perfectly content to let Hitler run Europe and Japan to run Asia.
- MattPalmer1086 1y agoWhat do you define as the vast majority of the western world? Just the US?
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoLiterally not one country initiated combat against Nazi Germany before being attacked itself. Churchill stands virtually alone as one with moral clarity on the Nazis. USSR allied with them. France was fine seeing everyone else get rolled. Poland signed a nonaggression pact. The British parliament were generally happy to let Hitler have his way. How about instead, you tell me who you think went out of their way to combat Nazism?
- beachy 1y ago> Literally not one country initiated combat against Nazi Germany before being attacked itself. Apart from many of the Commonwealth countries?
- lipowitz 1y agoThe UK could have declared war on Mars and the Commonwealth would follow, so you are only talking about Churchill.
- ta1243 1y agoChurchill became PM in May 1940, 8 months after the UK declared war on Germany.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoThe interim period being known as "The Phoney War" for being... well... phoney. A technical satisfaction of their obligations to Poland and no more.
- yread 1y agoBritish government even signed a british german naval friendship on the eve of Munich agreement. Moral clarity haha
- FridayoLeary 1y agoTo an extent you are right. ww1 made much more sense at the time then it does today. And it wasn't as clear during ww2 that it was in fact the greatest conflict of good vs evil ever. The extent of the German and Japanese atrocities only became clear after the war and they were so great that even the Soviet Union were on the side of the angels. I wouldn't say they were perfectly content. It was more that they were cowardly and apathetic.
- kjellsbells 1y agoWWI makes no sense (or perhaps, we understand it better) because over a hundred years have passed, and the highly emotive propaganda of the time no longer persuades us. If you were listening to your pastor thundering in the village church about (say) nurses in Belgium in 1914 you might not have had the emotional distance, or education in cold politics, to recognise that what was really going on was the death throes of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the fight for hegemony in the empires that remained. (Not to diminish the crimes in Belgium, btw, but they were part of a bigger picture that would have been hard to read in 1914.)
- jltsiren 1y agoThere was moral clarity in West and South Europe. But if you happened to be in East Europe, WW2 was primarily a war between nazism and communism. Everyone else was trying to find the least bad option, which usually meant choosing a side and switching it at least once.
- FridayoLeary 1y agoI don't know if the eastern european countries besides maybe ussr count. Many many polish, ukrainian and lithuanians enthusiastically helped the germans in carrying out the holocaust.
- oddmiral 1y agoMany jews were communists. Communists killed millions in those countries.
- rrr_oh_man 1y agoI think you got your causalities wrong there
- oddmiral 1y agoOn 02.04.2008, Russian State Duma confirmed that 7 million (adults and unknown number of children) died because of artificial starvation in 1932-1934 (Holodomor). Majority of them are Ukrainians. However, Russian Federation refuses to confirm the starvation and FSB agents jail or kill everybody who spreads information about Holodomor. If you are from RF - beware.
- rrr_oh_man 1y agoCausalities, not casualties. :)
- FridayoLeary 1y agoNot even close so don't try. There were some powerful positions in the ussr occupied by jews. I'm not sure what role they had in the purges etc. Stalin was definitely not a great lover of jews. On the other hand in the countries i mentioned above many locals participated in a genocide and murdered their neighbors with their bare hands.
- aerostable_slug 1y agoVarious infantry bunkers laying about are also a reminder, but what really gets me are the bonkers last-ditch defensive weapons you can still find in places, like preset positions for flame fougasse batteries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_fougasse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_fougasse They speak to the particular combination of desperation, urgency, and ingenuity found in the UK at that time.
- prox 1y agoI think we are seeing similar tactics and mobilization in Ukraine. They had to invent and be practical on the battlefield without the overwhelming numbers of the Russian empire.
- hermitcrab 1y agoIIRC Churchill was prepared to use chemical weapons as well. He wasn't messing around.
- euroderf 1y agoThe Germans were prepared to also. It would have been horrible on both sides.
- hermitcrab 1y agoThe Germans didn't use chemical weapons, even when Germany was invaded.
- euroderf 1y agoTo be specific, I meant that they were prepared to use them in the invasion of Britain.
- hermitcrab 1y agoI don't think I've seen anything about that. Do you have any links?
- mhh__ 1y ago> As the ww2 generation passes on, I was at a picnic recently that happened to be on VE day, it really struck me that now London is only about 35% or so English as the ww2 generation would've known it, almost no one has a particularly good reason to bother paying attention. I'm sure I was the only person there who knows who Barnes Wallis was. And yes I miss the boffins. They do still sort of exist but that type of mind has been strangled by the last few decades drive towards left-brained processes where everything basically has to be nailed down before the work actually starts. That latter point is one reason why we're struggling so much - we owe a great debt to the generations who built all the infrastructure and housing. We didn't pay it off, we now can't really do anything at scale other than extract rent. The victorians were building a HS2 every few years.
- jameshart 1y agoNot sure the WW2 generation would be all too comfortable with you looking around and making a snap judgement based solely on appearances that some of the people around you have a lesser right to call themselves ‘English’ than you because you assume none of them know who Barnes Wallace is.
- mhh__ 1y agoI'm not assuming, I asked; they wouldn't call themselves english anyway. Almost no one does anymore anyway, I don't.
- triceratops 1y ago> London is only about 35% or so English It also generates a quarter of the UK's GDP, so there's that.
- mhh__ 1y agoHow else do you think we pay for (say) about half of all social housing in central London to go to those born overseas Or even just the bizarre notion of having best part of half of zone 1 be social in the first place.
- ithkuil 1y agoPerhaps that's why the UK has so much more sympathy for Ukraine than the US. Yes the US fought in WWII with a lot of human investment, the amount of direct threats to American soil was much smaller than the UK and the memories of the war are those of the fights in the jungles and not of American children fleeing bombs in major cities
- pjc50 1y agoIt helps. I think Boris Johnson was very happy to play the Churchill role. The more interesting question is always why America suddenly forgot all its usual rhetoric of freedom, democracy, and liberating random countries (sometimes against their will) in this particular case, and whether it has anything to do with propaganda and bribery operations.
- potato3732842 1y agoIDK, maybe it has something to do with spending 20yr replacing the Taliban with the Taliban. You do not get a blank check to engage in nation building boondoggles until a "good one" comes along.
- ithkuil 1y agoThat can totally explain the lack of desire to get involved. That doesn't explain the victim blaming though. Zelenski is depicted as a war criminal because he refused to capitulate to a stronger enemy. War is crazy and brutal and engaging in one is going to get people killed. But I don't understand how we can expect some other country to just give up and yet we don't expect ourselves to do the same when somebody attacks us. Hence my only explanation is that no living person in America truly knows how it feels to be invaded.
- inquirerGeneral 1y ago[dead]
- rainworld 1y ago
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- dblangford 1y agoI would love to see something like The Great Egg Race back on TV instead of another series of Celebrities doing things Badly. Robot Wars is the closest we've been I suppose.
- ljf 1y agoI used to love 'Scrap Heap Challenge' - brilliant Sunday TV (mixed with an episode of Time Team too!)
- arethuza 1y agoSeems like a good excuse to mention the Commando Memorial near Spean Bridge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_Memorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_Memorial
- pjc50 1y agoThe picture at the top shows the monument itself, but it's even more impressive in context as it's on top of a treeless moorland hill, surrounded by incredible views.
- hermitcrab 1y agoI took a photo of the statue years ago. A friend told me that he knew an old gent who has been in the commandos and was a model for one of the figures in the statue. But he had never seen the statue. So I was able to give him a copy of the photo to pass on to him. Fancy having a statue of yourself and never bother going to see it!
- arethuza 1y agoThat makes me think about this gentleman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDGHKyB3T_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDGHKyB3T_U
- physicsguy 1y agoOn top of that, soldiers from the US were billeted all over the place.
- Yeul 1y agoThere are still remnants of the Atlantik wall in the Netherlands. The Germans demolished the entire coastline- and made hundreds of thousands of people homeless. An invasion of the Netherlands was never likely considering it is a swamp in which tanks cannot operate with rivers and canals every few kilometers. Ironically the very last place in Europe that was liberated because the Allies bypassed it in their drive to the Ruhr.